er all. I can easily understand that it must have been a
dangerous time for her--and for somebody else as well. (_Very simply_)
You must have loved my mother very much?

JULIAN

You have a curious way of asking questions.--Yes, I did love her.

FELIX

And those moments must have been very happy ones, when you sat in that
little garden with its overgrown fence, holding this canvas on your
knees, and out there on the bright meadow, among all those red and
white flowers, stood this young girl with anxiously smiling eyes,
holding her straw hat in one hand.

JULIAN

Your mother talked of those moments that last evening?

FELIX

Yes.--It is childish perhaps, but since then it has seemed impossible
to me that any other human being could ever have meant so much to you
as this one?

JULIAN (_more and more deeply moved, but speaking very quietly_) I
shall not answer you.--In the end I should instinctively be tempted to
make myself appear better than I am. You know very well how I have
lived my life--that it has not followed a regulated and direct course
like the lives of most other people. I suppose that the gift of
bestowing happiness of the kind that lasts, or of accepting it, has
never been mine.

FELIX

That's what I feel. It is what I have always felt. Often with something
like regret--or sorrow almost. But just people like you, who are
destined by their very nature to have many and varied experiences--just
such people should, I think, cling more faithfully and more gratefully
to memories of a tender, peaceful sort, like this--rather than to more
passionate and saddening memories.--Am I not right?

JULIAN

Maybe you are.

FELIX

My mother had never before mentioned this picture to me. Isn't it
strange?... That last night she did it for the first time.--We were
left alone on the veranda. The rest had already bid me good-by.... And
all of a sudden she began to talk about those summer days of long, long
ago. Her words had an undercurrent of meanings which she probably did
not realize. I believe that her own youth, which she had almost ceased
to understand, was unconsciously taking mine into its confidence. It
moved me more deeply than I can tell you.--Much as she cared for me,
she had never before talked to me like that. And I believe that she had
never been quite so dear to me as in those last moments.--And when
finally I had to leave, I felt that she had still much more to tell
me.--Now you'll understan